The Lange 1 Time Zone 136.032 sets A. Lange & Söhne's travel complication in Rose Gold with a Silver dial, the warm reading of the second-generation model the manufacture presented in June 2020. The Lange 1 Time Zone first appeared in 2005 and solved the problem of a second time zone in a way that suited the asymmetric Lange 1: instead of an extra hand or a 24-hour scale, it gives the second zone a dial of its own, set by a ring of cities around the edge. Fifteen years later Lange rebuilt the watch around a hand-wound movement developed for it, moved the day and night indicators into the centres of both time circles and added a feature introduced with this generation, a display showing whether the selected city observes daylight saving time. The 136.032 was one of the three references that launched the second generation, alongside a White Gold version with a black dial and a limited Yellow Gold edition with a champagne-toned dial, and it is the one that most closely echoes the classic Rose Gold and Silver combination of the original Lange 1. For collectors who travel, it pairs the Lange 1's composition with a function that is put to use every time a plane lands.
The case measures 41.9 mm in diameter and 10.9 mm in height, larger than the 38.5 mm Lange 1 to make room for the city ring, and its Rose Gold surfaces combine polished and brushed finishes. On the left side of the case a pusher at 8 o'clock advances the cities, and a second corrector at 10 o'clock sets the outsize date. The dial is solid silver in a Silver finish, and it carries more information than any time-only Lange 1 without losing the order of the original design. Home time occupies the large off-centre circle on the left, marked with applied Rose Gold Roman numerals and read with Rose Gold hands; the second zone appears in a smaller circle at 5 o'clock with printed Arabic numerals and an arrow pointing outward to the ring. That ring, carrying the names of 24 reference cities, runs around the edge of the dial, so the outsize date at 1 o'clock and the power reserve indicator between 2 and 4 o'clock keep their familiar places. Colour is used only where it carries meaning: a red marker on the city ring, a red window inside the arrow, and blue half-rings showing night in each time circle. The watch is fitted with a brown alligator strap and a Rose Gold prong buckle, a classic pairing for a warm metal and a pale dial.
Using the watch is straightforward. Each press of the pusher at 8 o'clock moves the city ring one zone eastward and, at the same moment, advances the hour hand of the small dial by one hour, so the arrow always points to the city whose time the small dial shows. Turning the crown sets both times together, keeping the two zones aligned, and when the owner arrives somewhere and wants local time to become home time, pulling the crown to its second position transfers the time from the small dial to the large one. The outsize date follows home time and has its own corrector. The ring-shaped day and night indicators sit at the hub of each time circle and turn with the hour hands, a blue semicircle marking the night hours, replacing the small rotating arrows of the first generation. The daylight saving display relies on coding on the underside of the city ring: when the selected city observes daylight saving time, the window in the arrow turns red, and when it keeps standard time all year, the window stays plain. The hand-wound movement has 448 parts and runs for 72 hours on a single barrel, where its predecessor needed two, and it includes a stop-seconds device for setting the time to the second.
The Lange 1 has served as the base for a series of complications since its debut in 1994, and the Time Zone, presented in 2005, was one of the first to change its dial substantially. The first generation kept the Lange 1's off-centre logic, set the second zone in its own subdial and used a city ring for selection, an approach that made the watch readable without turning it into a world timer, and it was offered in gold and in Platinum over the following years. Its movement relied on twin barrels for three days of running time. The 2020 generation kept the city ring and the synchronising crown but replaced almost everything else, with a dedicated movement, the central day and night rings that made the dial calmer, and the daylight saving window. The first three references were the White Gold 136.029 with a black dial, the limited Yellow Gold 136.021 and this Rose Gold 136.032, and in 2023 a Platinum version with a Rhodium dial, the 136.025, joined them as a boutique model. Within that line the Rose Gold reference is the traditional choice, closest in palette to the Lange 1 of 1994, and the one that most clearly presents the Time Zone as a classic dress watch with a traveller's function.
The 136.032 appeals to collectors who travel and want their second time zone handled with the same care as the rest of the watch. Because the second zone has its own dial rather than a hand, both times read as fully as on two separate watches, and the day and night rings answer the practical question of whether a call home will wake someone. The daylight saving window, small as it is, removes a common source of error when moving between cities that change their clocks and those that do not. In Rose Gold with a Silver dial the watch is warm and classical, suited to tailoring as much as to an airport lounge, and at 41.9 mm it has more presence than the regular Lange 1 while remaining slim at 10.9 mm. It will interest owners of a time-only Lange 1 looking for a complicated companion that shares its design, and collectors of dual-time watches who want a hand-wound movement finished in Glashütte, with its untreated German silver three-quarter plate, blued screws and a floral motif engraved by hand on the balance cock, all visible through the sapphire caseback.
